MEDUSA AND HER LOCKS. 143 



of the accustomed cramp, and thought nothing of it. 

 As I swam on, however, the tingling extended further 

 and further, and began to feel very much like the sting 

 of a nettle. Suddenly the truth flashed across me, and 

 I made for shore as fast as I could. 



On turning round for that purpose, I raised my 

 right arm out of the water, and found that dozens of 

 slender and transparent threads were hanging from it, 

 and evidently still attached to the medusa, now some 

 forty or fifty feet away. The filaments were slight and 

 delicate as those of a spider's web, but there the simili- 

 tude ceased, for each was armed with a myriad poisoned 

 darts that worked their way into the tissues, and affected 

 the nervous system like the stings of wasps. 



Before I reached shore the pain had become fearfully 

 severe, and on quitting the cool waves it was absolute 

 torture. Wherever one of the multitudinous threads had 

 come in contact with the skin there appeared a light 

 scarlet line, which on closer examination was resolvable 

 into minute dots or pustules, and the sensation was 

 much as if each dot were charged with a red-hot needle 

 gradually making its way through the nerves. The 

 slightest touch of the clothes was agony, and as I had 

 to walk more than two miles before reaching my lodg- 

 ings, the sufferings endured may be better imagined 

 than described. 



Severe, however, as was this pain, it was the least 

 part of the torture inflicted by these apparently insig- 

 nificant weapons. Both the respiration and the action of 



